Ah, thanks for the catch OtakuLoki. Although I, too, am inclined to agree with your last statement.
We’re not talking about Islam, but about sharia. I think you need to do some further research on the application of sharia law. Start with Amnesty International. Or Google on “stoning AND woman.”
I do judge sharia, and I find it, and any other misogynistic system of laws which institutionalizes the torture and marginalization of women to be too stupid to be allowed to exist.
Only do this if you have a strong stomach.
On a lighter note, the first thing I got was this:
I guess I don’t use Google as much as I ought to. :o
Feel free to present an example of a legal system better than the typical westernized constitutional democracy. I’ll be over here, holding my breath.
Well, regarding what they do in their mosques or in their homes… who cares? I thought we were discussing the barbarity of a legal system in which this sort of thing is not consider a rare miscarriage of justice, but business as usual. There is, of course, a time within living memory when courts in the U.S. and Canada were similarly unjust, and we’re not completely immune from bullshit, still, but we progressed. If they won’t, I have no sympathy to spare for them. Fuck their court system. It’s not coming my country in any way, shape or form, if I can stop it.
Not exactly. Most of the Middle East does not have unadultered rule by sharia - such is still relatively rare, really. Most ME legal codes are amalgams of religious and “secular”, usually borrowing from whichever colonial power happened to be running the show in the early 20th century.
It’s more directly comparing Western civilization ( sensu latu ) with Saudi Arabian civilization in terms of how they treat their female citizens. I have no problem saying the first has some arguable flaws and the second is just fucked. With the Taliban ( mostly ) gone as a formal government, SA once again takes pride of place as without a doubt the most retrograde nation on Earth in terms of how it treats women. Maybe not even retrograde - one could probably make a reasonable argument that women had more rights under Muhammed than under Saudi Arabia.
It’s not just the argument that whatever progressivism sharia injected into the lots of women in 7th century Arabia has been since rendered obsolescent by modern advances ( which is certainly my own opinion ). It’s that whether SA’s version of sharia is the way it is because it is more orthodox or more warped or just culturally accreted in a peculiar way, it is unfailingly about the shittiest application you’re going to find anywhere. “Fundamentalist” Iran is a shining beacon of equality in comparison - another statement of cultural relativism I have no trouble making.
Now of course blindly conflating SA’s version of Islamic law with sharia generally is an error. But it doesn’t follow that one can’t still make a reasoned argument with that as a jumping off point that sharia ( or any Abrahamic religious law ) is inherently undemocratic and/or inherently biased against women. I’m personally fairly comfortable with such a notion - they came from very patriarchal times and places, afterall.
But even acknowleding that ( if you do ) is not quite the same thing as condemning the religion and its practitioners in toto. Nor is criticizing ( or even venting in the Pit, a forum designed for such ) the same as physically imposing your own views on others.
I think a clarification is useful here. Amnesty International does not oppose Sharia law in general. AI opposes Sharia law when it contravenes international human rights standards, in the same way that AI opposes US law when it contravenes international human rights standards.
I said “application of sharia law” and in effect that AI was a good place to look.
While reading up on this case, I ran across an old article about her lawyer’s attempts at reforming the system over there. Apparently he is quite an activist over there, and has had some success in the past at challenging the system, which gives me hope that somehow things may change. Hopefully he’ll think of some way of addressing this unjust verdict.
If nothing else, reading about this kind of horrible stuff makes me appreciate just how fortunate we are to live in a free society where women are treated equally and the press has free rein. My goodness, it’s easy to take for granted how good we have it when you don’t realize how bad things are elsewhere.
I’ll say that. I’ll say it strongly and proudly and without even a hint of irony. We (the west) aren’t perfect by any means, and as in any human endeavor the fuck ups are legion, but taken as a whole the legal system we have here in the west does more to ensure individual freedom and prosperity then do the legal systems in the rest of the world, and I think that’s something to be proud of. Deal with it.
*Bolding mine.
Tamarlane
Things in Saudi have tightened-up a lot even over the last 30 years. Just in the minor matter of women wearing the abaya. In the late '70s and early '80s, most of the women wore a long shawl sort of thing and really didn’t worry too much about this. Since then, things have gradually tightened until women don’t dare walk the streets without a headscarf and abaya.
A couple of other things about the sentences handed down.
I don’t know this directly, but have been told that the flogger has to keep a copy of the Koran under his arm while he does his job. It keeps him from taking the sort of full-arm swings that would almost inevitably kill someone.
Another thing I note is that the victim of the rape was a Shia while the culprits were Suni. This can make a difference over here.
I’d be interested to hear your take on this.
Regards
Testy
This is why these sorts of things are worthless to nations that don’t give a shit about Law.
This story really distressed me when I read it yesterday. It has no real relevance to the OP’s outrage except that it is just one more example of barbaric behavior.
What really gave me pause, though, was the statement that Iran leads the world in the execution of juveniles. The first runner-up is the USA.
It may have a lot to do with one’s point of view. From the perspective of minorities in American prisons, Cuba might be more palatable.
Do they call me Mustafa the Minaret-erector? Do they call me Mustafa the Desert Poet? But whip one rape victim to death…
Well, was the USA. From Wikipedia :
Since we’re at it, only one of the kids on that list was under 17 at the time of the crime (Sean Sellers, 16). It’s not really the same thing –I’m just saying.
You don’t have to be “just saying”, you’re absolutely right. That’s one of those stats that the radical left likes to pull out to “prove” just how evil and backwards the U.S. is. Looking at the whole picture in context, naturally, reveals no such thing. No need to apologize for pointing out the truth.
Should we—the U.S., that is—be on a World Class killing list of any kind?
I’m not a radical leftie by any stretch, but capital punishment is fucking evil. Hell, how many of our men and women (in Texas alone, for that matter) have been wrongfully accused, convicted and murdered?
Hey, people! I wasn’t trying to start a hijack, I was just nitpicking.
And living in America sucks for the guy who gets hit by a truck on I-90. If he was in the Ukraine, that truck would have missed him. The American justice system has quite a ways to go, but it’s light-years beyond whipping rape victims, so your statement is pointless.